"Find a coach or mentor, embrace failure, stay connected to business changes - keys to HR success."
In this episode of The Shape of Work Podcast, we're honoured to host Aprajita Sud, Head of People Function at Indiagold. With a remarkable career trajectory spanning various HR leadership positions and a diverse educational background, Aprajita shares her profound insights and experiences with us. Let's delve into the conversation!
In this episode, Aprajita Soodbidas, a seasoned HR professional, shares insights on AI integration, psychological safety, and remote/hybrid work models. She emphasizes the importance of mentorship, embracing failure, and leadership development. Her practical advice serves as a guide for HR professionals navigating the evolving landscape of the workforce, highlighting adaptability, empathy, and forward-thinking approaches in human resources.
Episode Highlight
Follow: Aprajita Sud
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast Host:Ipshita Sharma
About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation building tools and products to simplify recruitment, onboarding, employee engagement, and retention. The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify— B2B verification platform
EngageWith— employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun, and interactive games platforms for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system.
Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture, leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.
"Find a coach or mentor, embrace failure, stay connected to business changes - keys to HR success."
In this episode of The Shape of Work Podcast, we're honoured to host Aprajita Sud, Head of People Function at Indiagold. With a remarkable career trajectory spanning various HR leadership positions and a diverse educational background, Aprajita shares her profound insights and experiences with us. Let's delve into the conversation!
In this episode, Aprajita Soodbidas, a seasoned HR professional, shares insights on AI integration, psychological safety, and remote/hybrid work models. She emphasizes the importance of mentorship, embracing failure, and leadership development. Her practical advice serves as a guide for HR professionals navigating the evolving landscape of the workforce, highlighting adaptability, empathy, and forward-thinking approaches in human resources.
Episode Highlight
Follow: Aprajita Sud
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast Host:Ipshita Sharma
About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation building tools and products to simplify recruitment, onboarding, employee engagement, and retention. The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify— B2B verification platform
EngageWith— employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun, and interactive games platforms for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system.
Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture, leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.
Hello and welcome to the Shape of Work, a podcast series by Springworks. My name is Anoop and I am your host. Each week, we'll be talking to top people managers across the world on the future of work and how it's shaping our workplace. So sit back and get ready to find out more from these movers and shakers, as we have a no-holes bar. Anything goes. Conversation with them about their journey, their insights, their thoughts, most importantly, their ideas and vision for the workplace of the future. Join in on the conversation, leave a comment and don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. So today we have Ms Aprajita Soodbidas, who is the head of people at India Gold. Hi Aprajita, how are you Good? Apjita, thank you. How are you? I'm good too. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights and journey with us. For our speakers, I wanted to know can you share more about your journey so far with us? Sure?
Speaker 3:so obviously it goes far back, but I'm not going to bore with details. So I've been in human resources, people related roles, but in everything for the last 20 years now. Obviously I've had some phases where there has been a gap, but I've been doing this for 20 years, and the reason why 20 years is because I actually started working right after school and hence 20 years from a perspective because I couldn't decide what I needed to do and what stream do I need to take in college. So I think why waste the time? Just actually start working, be financially independent. I was just slightly rebellious at that time, so I wanted to be independent and, trust me, since then I haven't looked back.
Speaker 3:My journey started with these international call centers BPO's that we know of today. At that time they were just starting off. So that's how I started. I've been a sales executive. That's what my career starting trajectory has been.
Speaker 3:I moved to learning and development because of that, because apparently I had very good hold on the product and obviously I understood the soft skills that were needed when you deal with customers basically. So that combination was something that was noticed and that's how learning and development happened for me, because then I was obviously given an additional responsibility to train people. That happened from then 10 years was just purely learning and development, and then, post that, I kind of realized that learning and development has become a lot of my comfort zone. It's almost like my second nature. I realized that this is what I love doing, but I wanted to do a lot more in human resources, because it was all related to people and I realized that there's so much more than just doing L&D. And that's how I slowly got into recruitment, then got involved in recruitment marketing, worked with an IT company called Publisher Sabient that's a SaaS company so worked with them for about a while that's where my recruitment started.
Speaker 3:Then went on to be with Amazon, linkedin and then, literally today I'm in my third startup today, like working for a third startup today, and really that's what the journey has been learning and development started recruitment, then I got into people, operations, some bit of admin and everything, and then being in a startup where all of this needs to come together. And I'm just when I look back and I said I don't know how it happened, it just happened and it just so organically happened that I can't be thankful enough. And here, yeah, here I am 20 years later, doing what I love doing and I have it. There's not been a day that I've been bored doing this Awesome.
Speaker 2:That's quite an enriching journey for 20 years you have been in the industry. I want you to know what emerging trends do you foresee in the HR landscape, especially in the context of future of work? See?
Speaker 3:emerging trends. Obviously, ai for short. You know, I know there's a lot of talk that AI is going to replace a lot of jobs, but in everything but the honest fact is, the AI is never going to replace jobs. It's just, I think we are trending towards that space where we are trying to come to terms that how to utilize AI to be more productive in what we do right, right, faster, more productive, right, and I think this this is an emerging trend from going from being scared of AI replacing jobs to actually working with AI to be more productive and get things done faster is definitely one of the trends that's going to stay by.
Speaker 3:And then I think the second thing which which is again in talks right now, which I now feel is going to happen very strongly, is the psychological safety at workplace. Right. Being in India, being in a culture, you know where we brought up, you know the way we've been brought up it and everything. We've obviously not been taught to speak up right, but that's changing. You know if you're not doing, if you're not feeling mentally safe, if you're, if you know if you are overburdened with things, if you know things are getting too much right, I think that space to talk about. This is definitely emerging, and I feel a lot of companies, no matter the scale of the business, no matter the scale of the organization. I think that realization is there now. So these two trends, I very, very strongly feel are definitely going to play a very, very important part in the talent landscape also as well.
Speaker 2:So yeah, good points. You touched upon Talking more on the AI side and technological front. In a rapidly evolving work landscape, how do you see technology and automation reshaping job roles and responsibilities?
Speaker 3:See, going back to that, you know the same thing again, I think. Just, you know, helping people be more productive, pushing people to, you know, learn and be more technological savvy. And you know the good part is that, with this current generation, you don't have to tell them to be technological savvy. They're anyway, they've been like, born and they have these tablets on their, in their hands. It's just that shift of like, kind of like I said again, I'm like, working with technology as opposed to seeing it as an enemy is a very, very important aspect, because I, you know, with no matter the kind of layoffs that are happening, no matter, you know, companies, shutting down the business is better than everything.
Speaker 3:Even today, there is such a mass majority of people that are, you know, looking for jobs right, and with the digital space, when it comes to technology, even the jobs that you thought that you did not want somebody doing, you can easily find somebody sitting in a different corner of the world and get that, get that work done Right. So, and this is all technology, this is nothing really added. You know, connecting, you know, even remote places on, you know, in the world, is is where I see is a very, very important factor. So you scale, you're going to be easily. I think a lot of businesses will definitely be able to scale a lot faster. Obviously, productivity is going to be a lot better than what we see right now. Remote jobs definitely are not going anywhere, right, because I'm like there's so many skilled people that you can get in touch with only if you look and you look only in the digital space, right, which is backed by technology. So you know, really, this is this is where we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and with the increasing importance of work-life balance, how are you carving the HR strategies shaping flexible work policies to meet the diverse needs of the employees we work?
Speaker 3:in a hybrid model, right? I think since COVID hit everybody, every organization around the globe has realized which obviously was not even in talks that remote work is also an option or hybrid working is also an option. We still do hybrid, but I am completely pro of not doing 100 percent remote. I'll tell you the reason why. Maybe a lot of people might not be very happy hearing this, but you see, psychologically people are meant to socialize and then to work 100 percent remote.
Speaker 3:That factor, that space of connecting with people, of delivering, of building those relationships, cannot happen if you're 100 percent remote Absolutely cannot. So a work-life balance, I feel, can be very, very easily maintained if you do a hybrid model that you are working, meeting, talking to people face-to-face, working with, but also going back, taking a step back and able to focus on the things that you need to deliver, because that's also so much going on around you. It's very important to disconnect yourself as well. You can do that very easily in a hybrid model. Most of our policies, processes and, like I said, I'm like you've continued to have a hybrid model, even if things are fine now, but we continue to do at least a hybrid model for everybody in the organizations.
Speaker 2:All right, great to know that. Also, you mentioned you have previously done learning and development and you're part of a lot of HR strategies, employee engagement etc. So in a future where work may be more decentralized, how do you ensure high levels of employee engagement and a sense of connection to the organization's mission and values?
Speaker 3:Sipsha, I think in a world like ours I think, like I said, that's the reason I kind of talked about people being very social beings and I don't think we can ignore that Engagement plays a very, very important part and it's becoming ever so challenging to keep people engaged. It is challenging Even today, even with 20 years of experience. Can I say that I have 100% tapped into be able to kind of keep all my employees engaged 100% all the time? No, because there are so many factors that's playing into account. So one of the things that we've evolved when it comes to engagement, I think that's one thing's important and I realized it, thankfully, sooner than later Evolving into the needs of the people is very important and then creating your engagement activities around that is very important because you could be country span-wide operations, you could be a global operations, but in everything but every human being's need remains the same they wanna be appreciated, they wanna be acknowledged Once in a while, they definitely wanna be rewarded for the value that they're adding. So that means a very specific constant and that will never change because human beings will never change. As a psychologist, we will never change.
Speaker 3:So I think few things that I do because we are a country-wide operations, as a few things I do is do my definite monthly connects with our teams sitting in different cities. Definitely do that. Ask them on how they're doing. What is it that better that we can do? Being open to celebrating occasions that are more important to them than being opposed to the fact that no company company why we only do this occasion celebration.
Speaker 3:No, going completely opposed to doing that, having to meet with them in person, even if it's once a quarter right, keeping your lines open for anybody to be able to pick up their phone and call you, message you that we need the support or we need to talk about this is very, very important, and I feel I'm going away from the fact that not team building activities are important all the time. People just want to be heard and, with digital space, that is decreasing, so continue to give space to people to be able to connect with you in real, over a phone call or anything, just so that they need somebody to talk, and I feel that's the biggest engagement factor that you can. Actually, if you have the time, you should definitely do that on a regular basis with your people, so yeah, definitely great advice and words of wisdom you shared there.
Speaker 2:with advancements in technology, how is your HR department leveraging digital tools for effective learning and development programs and can you share some examples of successful digital learning initiatives within your organization? See, we're now really focusing.
Speaker 3:So my team now has been trained to use at least a couple of AI tools. So that's one of the things that we are kind of doing to kind of at least build on engagement activities. The second thing that we are kind of in the process of doing also is creating a chatbot, that initial help, that instant help that somebody needs, right. They get a response on that also, but they're still able to talk to somebody in the team, even if not the chatbot right. So that's how we kind of using the technology tool but in everything, to kind of at least continue to engage with our employees. And again, like I also said, technology also plays a very, very important because there's a constant monthly basis. There's a form that goes out anonymous forms that goes out to the people only to kind of share anything and everything that they want to talk about.
Speaker 3:Our learning and development programs are developed around the fact and it goes back to recruitment, specifically the LND part. It goes back to the recruitment from a perspective, because when we're talking to people, interviewing them, we obviously in those conversations we realize what are their strengths and also the areas of improvement for them or the things that can be worked on right. And if we hire that person, we already have all of that documented right. So we have that data that anybody who's come on board, what are their strengths and what are their areas of improvement or things that they want to upscale on. And we evolve and we look at our current training programs, engagement activities on a quarterly basis, look at this data and discuss and evolve and change, edit, introduce new learning and development initiatives to be able to cater to the newer people that are coming in.
Speaker 3:So that's what newer people for existing people obviously you know if they've been in the system, regular connects with them really helps because you're kind of again documenting, receiving a lot of data on what's going on, where do they feel, and especially the appraisal process right. What are they saying? Where do they feel, at least according to them, for their growth, what does their growth mean to them? So, again, that happens on a quarterly basis for us for external and internal people. We continue to do that. Yes, there is scope of improvement in that because we've just it's just been a quarter that we've actually done this, but we proceed like positive feedback from our people that they feel that now there is a point that there's a lot of focus on upskilling. You know people who are in the system, so definitely so. That's how we kind of using technology, data, ai, to be able to kind of help us, you know, evolve, and what the people needs are so yeah, right, correct.
Speaker 2:Also, talking about the remote work and hybrid work we discussed previously, as we look into the future, how is your organization and other industry leaders prioritizing employee well-being, especially considering the challenges associated with remote work and hybrid work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's a very good question because, honestly, I have been at that place where I overlooked this part right. And you know, there was this point that we were doing this. One of our quarterly and one of the employees kind of asked a question that what is the people function team doing about mental wellness of the people? And that triggered something so deep inside me. I you know it's going to be tough to kind of explain that with. I said you know how, being in a people role for 20 years, this was something that that I never really thought that needs to. This is something that needs to be built upon as well, and that's when the understanding of psychological safety came into being and I started researching about this bit.
Speaker 3:So what we do now, I think even if it was one person that kind of brought that up, and I'm pretty sure that one person is saying a lot of people are thinking about it but they're not comfortable asking or sharing anything on that. So what we started doing is that now we partnered with companies and even the partner that we take group insurance with, that we have on-call psychologists who are available, we have regular talks that people come in from, we have given an anonymous space for people to reach out to these doctors, to space, and we don't want to know about it, even if they don't want to go through that. And this is really what we've done, because there's so much information we've received from our partners. Obviously they don't share the names of these people, but that's I'm like we don't really need to know that. It has to be a very unbiased way of looking at this information as well.
Speaker 3:But there's so many things that and I think one of the things that kind of came out was that people feel disconnected of where the company is heading. Right, and that's a and I'm not surprised when it came this was one of the statements that came right. I was not surprised because if we are completely remote or even if we work hybrid, there are going to be people who will feel disconnected to what the core of the organization is. They are going to feel disconnected to where the company is heading, and this mostly happens in startups because, being ever so dynamic, things changing like every minute, sometimes overnight, right, so, and that one thing kind of came up.
Speaker 3:So what we've started doing in our town halls is that we make sure that anything new, any important decision, what's the company milestones are going to be, what's the goals are going to be. We make sure to announce that through town halls or newsletters or just emails written, everything, and that's something we've started doing so that people at least were there, because we don't want them, because one person's feeling disconnected, the others are maybe feeling disconnected as well. So we've actually built that also, that we consciously make sure that even if it's the minutest change that we're doing, or minutest change that's going to impact anybody and everybody's role in the organization, we make sure to communicate that on a regular basis for sure.
Speaker 2:That is really great. Kudos to you for maintaining this transparency as well as taking care of the employee wellbeing, Also saying that you are in the leadership position. How is leadership development evolving to meet the demands of the changing workplace these days? Wow, so.
Speaker 3:I'm going to go back to my response, how we're kind of using technology. It is evolving. It is evolving every week, it's evolving every month, it's evolving every quarter. Right, Just said, we just have to make sure and I constantly keep on talking to my founders about it my management team, functional heads, but then everything that keep up with the market, read, understand what's happening outside in the market.
Speaker 3:Where is the trend going? Talk to your own people. What are their needs? I'm like, instead of business, once in a while, just talk about something else and just know what motivates them, Because there's a certain connection that functional has to have with their own specific teams as well. So, like I said, it's ever evolving. Do I have a specific response to that? No, but what I can for sure, very confidently say is keep up with the trend, Because it's changing so fast that with a blink of an eye, you might be thinking of something else and you might end up doing something else, Very right. So being constantly in touch with what's going on with your people, with outside, where is it trading, everything very important.
Speaker 2:And before we wrap this up, do you have any tips or strategies you'd like to share with the listeners here For the ways they can adapt themselves and prepare for the changing dynamics, especially for the HR professionals?
Speaker 3:Sure, I think one of the things and this is very personal to me also, epshuda that find a coach or a mentor. This could be somebody internal, external, somebody who try things, has a certain amount of experience. Find a coach or a mentor Because once you have that support, you know how to deal with situations. They will not do it for you, but they will help you walk through that situation and learn from that. So very, very important.
Speaker 3:Second thing I very strongly feel when it comes to human resources, I like a lot because it's so people oriented. I'm like education, getting degrees, starting with getting all kind of certifications, but then everything is definitely helpful because it helps you set a base on what's the base knowledge of any of the processes or functional aspects of human resources. But till the time you don't get down to doing things yourself, don't experience things yourself and actually fail it is extremely important to fail, but get up and learn from that you will not be able to relate to people's issues, situations, understanding what the minutest things that actually can make a very, very big difference when it comes to human resources and being successful in human resources. So I would really say this basically and lastly actually the world is changing. Hr has now seen a lot like another business stakeholder and not just human resources, and it's actually changing.
Speaker 3:I have seen it. I've been seeing it for 20 years so I can actually vouch for it. It is changing. It has changed to quite an extent. So be glued in with numbers, be glued into what the business decisions are being taken. Ask questions. Very, very important to ask questions Because until and unless you understand the business, you will not be able to deliver or create processes, policies for what your people really need to excel with ever dynamic changes to that. So yeah, Awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for sharing about your journey, as well as sharing these tips with us. I'm pretty sure that the listeners will find them very useful.
Speaker 3:Thanks, I hope so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, hoping to do more sessions with you in future. Thank you for your time. Thank you, pratap. Thank you.